Alison Bechdel Quotes

I was brought up in the countryside in Ireland and would go bonkers if I couldn't escape the city. I like to wake and hear birds tweeting, not the low drone of traffic.

I like the country, the peace and quiet, because the music business is so hectic.

No wise man will go to live in the country, unless he has something to do which can be better done in the country. For instance, if he is to shut himself up for a year to study science, it is better to look out to the fields, than to an opposite wall. Then, if a man walks out in the country, there is nobody to keep him from walking in again: but if a man walks out in London, he is not sure when he will walk in again. A great city is, to be sure, the school for studying life.

I live out in the country now and it's quiet and it's a place where I can think a lot.

I live in a flat in central London. I do like it there; there's always stuff going on. But I do crave a bit of peace and quiet.

I actually would love to live in New York. But I need land; I need space. I'd love to move to a place where I could have a lot of land and a goat.

Most people live in the city and go to the country at the weekend, and that's posh and aristocratic, but actually to live in the country and come to London when you can't take it any more is different.

I just keep to myself and live in the country and visit the cities.

Where should the scholar live? In solitude, or in society? in the green stillness of the country, where he can hear the heart of Nature beat, or in the dark, gray town where he can hear and feel the throbbing heart of man?

A city man is a home anywhere, for all big cities are much alike. But a country man has a place where he belongs, where he always returns, and where, when the time comes, he is willing to die.

[On living in New York City:] I'm oblivious to everything. I just don't notice anything. I sat in a coffee shop, drank half a cup of coffee before I noticed there was lipstick on the cup. There was wadded-up gum and lipstick on the napkin. I must have been sitting on that woman's lap for an hour.

City's just a jungle; more games to play Trapped in the heart of it, tryin' to get away I was raised in the country, I been workin' in the town I been in trouble ever since I set my suitcase down

I think it's the wrong way around to say when you get older move to the country. I think when you get older you move to New York. If you're a nice broad they'll look after you.

Why one day in the country Is worth a month in town; Is worth a day and a year Of the dusty, musty, lag-last fashion That days drone elsewhere.

I love New York, and I would love to try to live here for a while if I ever got the chance, but it's also extremely hectic. I don't think I would cope with that.

Modern nature-worship is all upside down. Trees and fields ought to be the ordinary things; terraces and temples ought to be extraordinary. I am on the side of the man who lives in the country and wants to go to London.

When one is in town one amuses oneself. When one is in the country one amuses other people. It is excessively boring.

I'd like to be in the country so that I'd could like being in the city.

The city mouse lives in a house, The garden mouse lives in a bower

The city reveals the moral ends of being, and sets the awful problem of life. The country soothes us, refreshes us, lifts us up with religious suggestion.

Ive got a lot of friends there and there is stuff to do but as much as I dislike LA I really like living and working in New York City.

In New York City, a lot of people think "the great outdoors" is the area between your front door and a taxi cab.

For in that city [New York] there is neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistake for energy.

... why do people who live in the country always give themselves such airs?

In the great cities, winter glitters with art and feasting. But poetry, the country cousin, sees only the dearth of the fields.